Encrypting entries

This feature is available to organizations on the Team and Enterprise plans.

Encrypting your entry data keeps it safe and prevents it from being transmitted out of your Cognito Forms account. You must encrypt any form and protect any field that contains sensitive information, such as: Social Security numbers, Driver’s license numbers, and other personally identifiable information.

You can encrypt and protect any field type on your forms, including uploaded files and sections. All of your data will still be easily accessible to you, but safe from malicious outside attacks.

Once enabled, encryption will only apply to entries after you enable it, not to existing entries. Additionally, data encryption does not affect how other features work with your form. Please note that, even with encryption enabled, you are prohibited from collecting and storing credit card information in Cognito Forms, except as supported by Cognito Forms for processing online payments using secure third-party payment processors.

Encrypting a form

If you have signed a BAA with Cognito Forms to enable HIPAA compliance, you cannot turn encryption off. When downgrading to a plan that doesn’t support data encryption, your form data will no longer be encrypted.

To encrypt your form entry data:

Select the form you want to encrypt, and open the form builder.

In the Form Settings box on the left hand side, select Encrypt Entry Data? to encrypt all of the form’s entry data at rest.

The form data is now more secure, and impossible for an intruder to decipher. It will also require JSON posts and confirmation redirects to be over SSL.

Protecting fields

Protecting a field ensures that the entry data does not appear in notification/confirmation emails, generated documents, or through any other method in which data is transferred out of your account. You can even protect a section, which will in turn protect every field within it.

To protect a field:

Ensure that data encryption is enabled.

Open the field you want to protect, and select the Protect Field? option at the bottom of the field settings.

The field will display a lock icon, indicating that it is protected.

Collecting passwords

To securely collect passwords through your Cognito Forms:

Ensure that data encryption is enabled.

Add a Textbox field to your form, and select Password as the field type. Password fields are always set to Protected.

Now, when someone types in their password, the characters are masked from view.